Our websites may use cookies to personalize and enhance your experience. By continuing without changing your cookie settings, you agree to this collection. For more information, please see our University Websites Privacy Notice.

In this Olorgesailie Basin excavation site, red ocher pigments were found with Middle Stone Age artifacts. The light brown and gray layers provide evidence of ancient soils and of landscapes affected by earthquakes and other seismic activity, factors that rapidly altered the environment and resources on which human ancestors depended for survival. (Human Origins Program, Smithsonian)

An international team of anthropologists, including UConn researcher David Leslie, have discovered that early humans in East Africa had – by about 320,000 years ago, much earlier than previously thought – begun trading with distant groups, using color pigments, and manufacturing more sophisticated tools than those of the Early Stone Age.

These newly discovered activities, reported March 15 in the journal Science, occur tens of thousands of years earlier – verified using radiometric dating – than previous evidence has shown in eastern Africa, and approximately date to the oldest known fossil record of Homo sapiens.

These behaviors, which are characteristic of humans who lived during the Middle Stone Age, replaced technologies and ways of life that had been in place for hundreds of thousands of years.

Evidence for these milestones in humans’ evolutionary past comes from the Olorgesailie Basin in southern Kenya, which holds an archeological record of early human life spanning more than a million years. The new discoveries indicate that these behaviors emerged during a period of tremendous environmental variability in the region. As earthquakes remodeled the landscape and climate fluctuated between wet and dry conditions, technological innovation, social exchange networks, and early symbolic communication would have helped early humans survive and obtain the resources they needed despite unpredictable conditions, the scientists say.

“The innovation to create these new tools and adapt these new suites of behaviors is likely driven by the changes in the environment these people were adapting to,” says Leslie, a research scientist in the Department of Anthropology at UConn, whose expertise in stone tools helped with the research. “Developing new tools to extract more resources from the environment is a particularly human characteristic.”

The first evidence of human life in the Olorgesailie Basin comes from about 1.2 million years ago. For hundreds of the thousands of years, people living there made and used large stone-cutting tools called handaxes. Beginning in 2002, the team discovered a variety of smaller, more carefully shaped tools in the Olorgesailie Basin. Isotopic dating by collaborators revealed that the tools were surprisingly old – made between 320,000 and 305,000 years ago. These tools were carefully crafted and more specialized than the large, all-purpose handaxes. Many were points designed to be attached to a shaft and potentially used as projectile weapons, while others were shaped as scrapers or awls.

While the handaxes of the earlier era were manufactured using local stones, the researchers found small stone points made of non-local obsidian at their Middle Stone Age sites. The team also found larger, unshaped pieces of the sharp-edged volcanic stone at Olorgesailie, which has no obsidian source of its own. The diverse chemical composition of the artifacts matches that of a wide range of obsidian sources in multiple directions 15 to 55 miles away, suggesting exchange networks were in place to move the valuable stone across the ancient landscape.

The team also discovered black and red rocks – manganese and ocher – at the sites, along with evidence that the rocks had been processed for use as coloring material.

“The pigments are really interesting and important in that they show early signs of symbolic representation,” Leslie says. “They were maybe painting their bodies, perhaps their clothing, or using them for rock art. What is striking about the use of the pigment is that it shows people were thinking 320,000 years ago in very similar ways to how we think about the world too.”

Hoping to understand what might have driven such fundamental changes in human behavior, the research team integrated data from a variety of sources to assess and reconstruct the ancient environment in which the users of these artifacts lived. Their findings suggest that the period when these behaviors emerged was one of changing landscapes and climate, in which the availability of resources would have been unreliable.

Geological, geochemical, paleobotanical, and faunal evidence indicates that an extended period of climate instability affected the region beginning around 360,000 years ago, at the same time earthquakes were continually altering the landscape. Although some researchers have proposed that early humans evolved gradually in response to an arid environment, Potts says his team’s findings support an alternative idea. Environmental fluctuations would have presented significant challenges to inhabitants of the Olorgesailie Basin, prompting changes in technology and social structures that improved the likelihood of securing resources during times of scarcity.

The paper also highlights the published contributions of the Kapthurin Formation project, also in Kenya, led by UConn anthropology professor Sally McBrearty.

The research teams for this study published in Science include collaborators from the following institutions: the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museums of Kenya, George Washington University, the Berkeley Geochronology Center, the National Science Foundation, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Missouri, the University of Bordeaux (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), the University of Connecticut, Emory University, and the University of Bergen.

Funding for this research was provided by the Smithsonian, the National Science Foundation (grant numbers EAR-1322017, BCS-0218511 (RP) 2011116368 (AMZ), BCS-1240694 (ASB and AMZ), DGE-0801634, EAR-1322017, BCS-0802757, BCS-0814304), and George Washington University.

Join us for a talk by Gina Barreca,2018 UCONN BOARD OF TRUSTEESDISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH

All great works of fiction, poetry and dramaâas well as texts forming mythologies, religions, national epics to heroic sagasâhave loneliness at the heart of their narrative. From Persephone to Peter Pan, from âFrankensteinâ to âFrozen,â the stories we pass along are saturated with unwilling isolation.âOnly around half of Americans say they have meaningful, daily face-to-face social interactions,â according to a 2017 study. A former U.S. Surgeon General argues that âWe live in the most technologically connected age in the history of civilization, yet rates of loneliness have doubled since the 1980s.â We need more than social media. We need social contact. We need community. How can we break through the loneliness barrier? Being alone when in need of companionship is more than sad; itâs an epidemic.Chronic loneliness is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes per day. We need to change our national story and, often, our personal ones as well.Even the concept of the âlone wolfâ is a myth. Wolves hunt in packs.

Reception to follow.

For more information about this event, or if you are an individual who requires special accommodation to participate, please contact the CLAS Deanâs Office at (860) 486-2713.

A liberal arts and sciences degree prepares students with the tools they need to excel across a wide range of careers. Given the number of options available to you, it can be overwhelming to narrow down career choices. Attending CLAS Career Night will provide you exposure to career opportunities for CLAS students.

This semesterâs focus will be on research-based careers. During this event you will engage with CLAS alumni, learn about various occupations, and gain insight about how to best prepare for your future career.

The McNair Scholars Program and the Office of Undergraduate Research invite you to join us for a brown bag research seminar.

Birds, Bacteria, and Bioinformatics: Why Evolutionary Biology is the Best

Sarah Hird, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

This series is open to all undergraduate and graduate students, and is designed especially for students conducting (or interested in conducting) STEM research. These seminars are opportunities to learn about research being pursued around campus, to talk with faculty about their path into research, and to ask questions about getting involved in research.

About CLAS

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is the academic core of learning and research at UConn. We are committed to the full spectrum of academics across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. We give students a liberal arts and sciences education that empowers them with broad knowledge, transferable skills, and an ability to think critically about important issues across a variety of disciplines.